Transmission Belt, Transactional Political Culture and the Challenges of Participatory Election Supervision in the 2024 Elections: A Socio-Legal Review

Money politics poses a systemic threat to the integrity of Indonesia's electoral democracy. Employing a socio-legal approach that integrates normative and empirical analyses, this article examines this phenomenon in Magelang Regency from 2019 to 2024. The study reveals that although Indonesia's electoral regulatory framework—anchored in Law No. 7 of 2017 and various Bawaslu regulations—provides comprehensive prevention and enforcement instruments, its effectiveness is undermined by three socio-cultural factors: low political literacy, chronic poverty that incentivizes vote-buying, and strong kinship ties that discourage the reporting of violations. While grassroots initiatives like the Anti-Money Politics Village (Desa APU) and Monitoring Village programs introduced by the Magelang Regency Bawaslu represent significant institutional breakthroughs, they require synergistic integration with ongoing poverty alleviation and sustainable political education programs to transcend mere symbolic declarations.